Suche:fractal universe

Geoglyph is the new duo project by Alohn and Khey Mysterio, a convergence of two deeply singular practices into a single subterranean signal. Their debut album arrives as the eighth reference on Organic Signs, not as a collection of tracks but as a carved artifact: six inscriptions pressed into vinyl, mapping a sonic territory where time, rhythm and texture are no longer linear, but layered like geological memory.

Through Geoglyph, Alohn and Khey Mysterio convey a message from below, or beyond. A pulse engraved from forgotten times in the basement of reality, reactivated by abyssal basses, vibrating layers and fractured textures. Exhumed from the subterranean strata where psychedelic dub, mineral techno and fractal dubstep fuse into raw energy, their music becomes a point of contact: every beat, every silence, every oscillation acting as a coordinate toward another perception. What unfolds is not simply sound design, but an invocation, rhythms as sigils, timbre as gnosis, signals that seem to arrive already charged with intention.

Across the album, Alohn’s guitar notes fall like cascades through the mix, dissolving at times into controlled feedback and crystallizing into melodic fragments that hover between tension and release. These organic gestures are interwoven with Khey Mysterio’s dense low-end architectures and rhythmic frameworks, creating a constantly shifting terrain: from weightless transmissions and ritualistic voices to moments of overwhelming propulsion where the music suddenly breaks open with tectonic force. The record moves fluidly between meditative suspension and explosive motion, never settling into a single state for long.

A strong undercurrent of what has come to be known as “druidstep” runs through the album, a term coined within the 95 Open Tabs universe to describe a form of dubstep untethered from genre convention, rooted instead in bass as ritual, in groove as invocation. Here it meets dub-techno pulse, psychedelic echoes and high-velocity 4×4 pressure, drawing subtle influence from underground bass cultures without ever becoming referential. The result is a body of work that feels both ancient and forward-leaning, cyclical rather than linear: a living geoglyph that reveals different meanings depending on how (and where) it is read.

As the final movement accelerates into its closing phase, the album releases its energy outward, with frequencies stretched toward their limits, leaving behind the trace of a completed ceremony. In this sense, Geoglyph’s debut stands as a defining moment within the Organic Signs continuum: a record that unfolds rather than explains, offering an experience to be entered, absorbed, and carried. With this release, the label continues to explore new sonic spaces, evolving and expanding while giving deeper meaning to its own essence. A message from beneath the surface, waiting for those willing to tune in.

Más de este género

Closely following a busy 2023, GiGi FM announces her brand-new record label, offering “Kiwi Synthesis Diary Vol. 2” to mark the debut. Sea~rène takes aim at dreamlike and ethereal electronic music to reconnect the subconscious and the cosmos through immersive storytelling. As the identity quote of the label says itself “We are Sea~rène swimming in-between supernatural tides, forever following the emotional waves of the universe”.

Already quite accomplished in her milieu through an acclaimed release on Bambounou’s Bambelabel, where she explored the relationship between bodily technologies and music, as well as through her residency on NTS Radio where she explores inter-dimensional sounds and shares her own musical palette, GiGi also continues to perform at strings of performances in the past years in settings like Berghain, Rural Japan, Draaimolen, Fabric, De School, Primavera, The Bunker New York, and Sustain Release. The French/Italian artist takes her productions further with this first release of her imprint. A continuation of her first self-released project, “Kiwi Synthesis Diary 21k,” in 2021, GiGi FM celebrates the exchange between her, as the owner of the journal, and its reader through euphoric soundscapes and vibrant psychedelia. Taking a step back from lockdown introspections, blurred lines between dream and reality like ambient and drony atmospheres, GiGi gives us a bent club record full of colors and life.

GiGi FM guides us through dreams of sonic environments and the adventures to be had through them. Some are characterized by evolving fractals and shifting landscapes like in the healing mushroom journey of ‘Amadamushies’ and the mythical Japanese Heron ‘Tsuru’. Combining steady rhythm and immersive ambiances, the result intends to soothe into a state of openness through kindly familiar territories. Sifting through the tracks, we find ourselves traveling fast through cosmic ecosystems like in the spiritual and cosmic teaching that “Tevora'' represents, as well as ‘Househopping (Keroppi)’ and “Sly Xupete Di Barcelona,” conveying the urgency to feel and create, even within difficult circumstances, while “Spazio Teletrasporto'' takes us on a hypnotic whirlwind trip into the depths of the cosmos and our inner consciousness. Through these chapters of a journey, a connection between the mind and the beyond is implied, and its importance is highlighted.

Deeply influenced by astrology, philosophy, and the cosmos; for GiGi, music is both a tool for expression and introspection. As a multi-hyphenate artist, she continues on her quest to push artistic boundaries and hold space for unique audience experiences. Whatever medium she may adopt, the result is a rich embodiment of the interconnectedness of sound, color, movement, and metaphysics.

With a clutch of EPs under his belt spanning a wealth of pallets, Henzo narrows the focus on his debut studio album “The Poems We Write For Ourselves” - a culmination of persistent iterations over several years, distilling his sonic milieu into something that feels decidedly his own. The album proper is coupled with a debut live performance which reinterprets the tracks and splices them with omitted material from the time of writing - recorded in full in the intimate confines of Manchester’s growingly infamous Stage and Radio basement. Honing his craft in the shadows of Lancashire, Poems is an expansive reflection of the producer’s time spent away committing to the scope of an LP.

A thread of stratified sound design weaves throughout the record, but with a discerning dancefloor proclivity mostly prevalent. Cold opener “Noggin” riffs on noughties Raster-Noton a la Byetone rebuilt with fractal tear out DnB, with closer “Indulgence” following suit on a puckered plod of Dub Techno ambience. More club-focussed moments come in the form of “Rustica Slump” and “Blue Will...”, the former’s sickly sweet vocals resolved by the latter’s stoic UKG/Techno rudeness. “A Bouquet of Clumsy Words” channels mechanical shuffle with a stripped back 2/4 pulse whilst maintaining a firmly FWD>>energy alongside “Plant Your Roots In Me” on a similar vector - swapping out a straight kick pattern for a bludgeoning 808 assault on an early Hessle-indebted tip.

“Take Stock, Touch Grass” harks to golden era ClekClekBoom and Night Slugs with a bare bones kick and vocal motif, updating the formula with a tweaking lead line that places it firmly in the contemporary space. “Swell:Shrink” sings from the same sheet with a shrieking, space age wobble doing the heavy lifting, knocking the pace back to a shoulder-lean swagger on a slow fast conundrum Henzo has shown his flair for on previous releases.

The outliers to Henzo’s more known approach, “Worm Grunting” with Belfast’s Emby, an amalgamation of halfest time DnB and illest mannered Road Rap, plus “The Rest Is The Mess You Leave”, a starkly anti-retro Ghettotek endeavour, give grounds to the LP. Clearly rooted in the comfortable universe of the dancefloor, these tracks expand the producer’s realm into loftier heights as he graduates into long play land.

There is no one universe for Ben LaMar Gay, he just sonic booms from one sound to another." - NPR Music
Ben LaMar Gay’s de facto debut album, Downtown Castles Can Never Block The Sun, was our attempt to introduce the legendary Chicago composer / improvisor / renaissance man to the rest of the world with a compilation of tracks from “7 albums he made over 7 years but never made the effort to actually release. ” The material showcases Gay’s penchant for genre-hopping—from Reich-ian soundscape voyages to Don Cherry-esque polyrhythm treks to Jorge Ben-style vocal-and-string earworms—while keeping his singular musical voice in focus.
In the years since its release, this long OOP collection has become a touchstone, foreshadowing the breadth and scope of Ben LaMar Gay’s output since. The songs-between-the-songs warped Soul Americana madness and beauty of Open Arms To Open Us, the unhinged long form freedom of Certain Reveries—each fresh mode would defy expectation if without the context established by Downtown Castles. To quote the OG press release, “to call it ‘eclectic’ would only scratch the surface. This music is everything.

Jules Reidy"s sublime music maps the human experience in glittering constellations of sound. The guitarist is a driver of Berlin"s fertile contemporary music scene. A wide-eyed imagination combined with technical mastery guide each work in Reidy"s extensive catalog, from solo guitar albums and collaborations with innovative peers, including recent works with claire rousay, Oren Ambarchi, Andrea Belfi and Sam Dunscombe to major commissions from JACK Quartet and Zinc & Copper. The songs of Ghost/Spirit collectively convey an astral sense of yearning and wonder, pushing towards transcendence. The album charts a deeply personal journey with love, spirituality and transformation expressed in fractal guitar figures, ethereal vocal vapors and rippling microtones. Reidy"s guitar approach unlocks the tonal and textural possibilities of the instrument from their use of alternate tunings and astute processing. The maximalist melodics of album opener "Every Day There"s a Sunset" are bolstered by rumbling bass samples from Andreas Dzialocha, Reidy"s collaborator in the duo Sun Kit. On "Satellite," cello samples from Judith Hamann stretch out through the cosmos, orbited by spiraling finger-picked guitars, while stacked trombone chords echo out into the ether. Thundering drum samples from Berlin metal mainstay Sara Neidorf push the album to ecstatic peaks on "Every Day There"s a Sunrise," fragmented rhythms breaking apart in the atmosphere. Field recordings of the Berlin S-Bahn recur throughout the album, another endless cycle of leaving and returning that shuttles beneath the album"s whirling tones. Ghost/Spirit captures the inherent power and agency in choosing to offer yourself up to the universe and let go, ego death and prayer rendered in incandescent sonics. Reidy"s inimitable skill as a guitarist, producer and composer is on full display, and when combined with the intensity of experience, the resulting album is a remarkable work of art.

Jules Reidy"s sublime music maps the human experience in glittering constellations of sound. The guitarist is a driver of Berlin"s fertile contemporary music scene. A wide-eyed imagination combined with technical mastery guide each work in Reidy"s extensive catalog, from solo guitar albums and collaborations with innovative peers, including recent works with claire rousay, Oren Ambarchi, Andrea Belfi and Sam Dunscombe to major commissions from JACK Quartet and Zinc & Copper. The songs of Ghost/Spirit collectively convey an astral sense of yearning and wonder, pushing towards transcendence. The album charts a deeply personal journey with love, spirituality and transformation expressed in fractal guitar figures, ethereal vocal vapors and rippling microtones. Reidy"s guitar approach unlocks the tonal and textural possibilities of the instrument from their use of alternate tunings and astute processing. The maximalist melodics of album opener "Every Day There"s a Sunset" are bolstered by rumbling bass samples from Andreas Dzialocha, Reidy"s collaborator in the duo Sun Kit. On "Satellite," cello samples from Judith Hamann stretch out through the cosmos, orbited by spiraling finger-picked guitars, while stacked trombone chords echo out into the ether. Thundering drum samples from Berlin metal mainstay Sara Neidorf push the album to ecstatic peaks on "Every Day There"s a Sunrise," fragmented rhythms breaking apart in the atmosphere. Field recordings of the Berlin S-Bahn recur throughout the album, another endless cycle of leaving and returning that shuttles beneath the album"s whirling tones. Ghost/Spirit captures the inherent power and agency in choosing to offer yourself up to the universe and let go, ego death and prayer rendered in incandescent sonics. Reidy"s inimitable skill as a guitarist, producer and composer is on full display, and when combined with the intensity of experience, the resulting album is a remarkable work of art.

Bringing a dance floor sensibility to the deeper end of the electronic spectrum, the Dutch duo Jordi van Achthoven and Micha Heyboer a.k.a. Tinlicker have courted the attention of global labels and tastemakers since breaking out in 2013. Prolific musicians with backgrounds in dubstep and pop production, their journey so far has seen them release on the likes of Mau5trap, Armada, Sotto Voce and Anjunadeep - with an a eclectic array of DJ support from Above & Beyond to Oliver Heldens, Tiësto to Yotto. Able to turn their hand to deep house, techno and electro, the pair have reworked the likes of Lane 8 and Deadmau5; their stunning update of Reflekt ‘Need To Feel Loved’ becoming a sought after mix among fellow DJs over the last 12 months. A showcase for their dynamic songwriting and forward thinking sound design, Tinlicker’s debut artist album ‘This Is Not Our Universe’ will be released on Anjunabeats this September.

Pleasure Planet’s kaleidoscopic debut album has been a long time coming, but good things come to those who wait. Developed over years of late-night studio improvisations, ‘Pleasure Planet’ is an affectionate and colorful patchwork of the New York City-based trio’s knotted influences that’s suspended between the rave and the chill-out room, weaving glistening pads and chunky basslines into vocal earworms and warm, saturated rhythmic cycles. Bandmates Andrew Potter, Kim Ann Foxman and Brian Hersey enter into a lysergic dialog with their discrete personal musical histories, drawing inspiration from vintage EBM, ambient music and heady early ’90s West Coast rave sounds and launching these classic elements into a transcendent new sonic universe.

Celebrated DJ and producer Foxman was a lead singer of Hercules and Love Affair when she first ran into DC rave veteran Potter, and the two rapidly realized their musical interests overlapped. So when Potter was recording with his studiomate Hersey, a NYC underground club scene mainstay, and they needed to bring in a vocalist, the choice was simple. Working together was a refreshing, freeing experience for the three seasoned artists, and the more they experimented, the closer they became; Foxman ended up moving into the studio, and Pleasure Planet was manifested into existence. “We’re like family,” says Potter. “We’re always on the same page – we couldn’t make this music solo.”

For Foxman, the open-ended jam sessions provided her with a chance to try something new, a few steps from the dancefloor-forward DJ tracks she’s best known for producing. And as the trio pooled their adolescent rave memories, reflecting on them with more mature ears, they began to develop the signature sound that was first heard on the Throne Of Blood-released ‘Animals’ 12″. Pleasure Planet aren’t trying to re-capture the past, but suggest a poetic contemplation that layers their recollections and musical obsessions into a hypnotic sci-fi dream. Harnessing a self-described “Aladdin’s cave” of analog and digital gear that help galvanize the timeline, they bridge the gap between avant-pop and icy bleep techno, curving suggestive words through lattices of tightly-engineered electronics.

On ‘Endless’, Foxman’s voice is echoed into a glistening haze that hovers around ethereal pads and tense, electroid pulses. Slow-moving and evocative, it’s a track that capture the open endedness of post-rave euphoria, touching the afterparty but moving far beyond the material world. She’s more recognizable on ‘Alien’, the album’s most upfront track, singing in a glassy, upper-register coo over urgent bass bumps, taut guitars and florid electronic atmospheres. “Are you an alien, or are you an angel?” she asks, fractalizing the borders between genres. And the band’s sense of cosmic togetherness bubbles to the surface on ‘Saved by the Bells’, a meditative after-hours experiment that diminishes the pulsing beats for a moment to bring out a spectrum of interconnected, serpentine melodies.

Modular bleeps and echoing percussion anchor the swooning ‘Planet Love’, one of Pleasure Planet’s most recent compositions and one of the album’s most outwardly psychedelic cuts, while the urgent and anthemic ‘Go With Madness’ steps back towards the main stage, evaporating Foxman’s memorable calls into a thumping procession of analog drums and squelchy, acidic bass tweaks. But they save the best for last, tugging at the heartstrings with ‘Remember (In Dreams)’, a giddy spiral of blipping synth arpeggios and haunting, reverberated chorals. It’s the perfect way to conclude an album that cryptically gestures towards the vulnerability of friendship, celebrating the shared experiences that result in some of the most meaningful memories of all.

Numen ist das dritte Album von ALKALOID, und es enthält einige der kompliziertesten, nachdenklichsten, aber auch komplett verrückten Ideen der Band. Das Album wird aus der gottähnlichen Perspektive eines uralten Außerirdischen erzählt, der mit seinem dämonischen Grunzen die gesamte Galaxie umgestalten kann.

ALKALOID sind immer noch durch ihre Liebe zum Death Metal verbunden. Schließlich handelt es sich um eine Supergroup, die aus Gründungsmitgliedern von OBSCURA, DARK FORTRESS und SPAWN OF POSESSION besteht. Das feurige, mit den Fingern getippte Solo, das sich nach der Hälfte von "Clusterfuck" herauskristallisiert, wird wie eine Ameise unter einem Drop-D-Hammersturm zerquetscht.

Aber auf "Numen" spielt die bayerische Band auch mit allen möglichen Genre-Experimenten. "The Cambrian Explosion" stellt den Tech-Death mit verführerischen Anflügen von Jazz und Flamenco auf den Kopf.
ALKALOID sind die verrückten Wissenschaftler des Metal. Mit "Numen" haben sie eine weitere explosive Mischung aus progressivem Death Metal geschaffen!

FFO: OBSCURA, BEYOND CREATION, FRACTAL UNIVERSE

Numen ist das dritte Album von ALKALOID, und es enthält einige der kompliziertesten, nachdenklichsten, aber auch komplett verrückten Ideen der Band. Das Album wird aus der gottähnlichen Perspektive eines uralten Außerirdischen erzählt, der mit seinem dämonischen Grunzen die gesamte Galaxie umgestalten kann.

ALKALOID sind immer noch durch ihre Liebe zum Death Metal verbunden. Schließlich handelt es sich um eine Supergroup, die aus Gründungsmitgliedern von OBSCURA, DARK FORTRESS und SPAWN OF POSESSION besteht. Das feurige, mit den Fingern getippte Solo, das sich nach der Hälfte von "Clusterfuck" herauskristallisiert, wird wie eine Ameise unter einem Drop-D-Hammersturm zerquetscht.

Aber auf "Numen" spielt die bayerische Band auch mit allen möglichen Genre-Experimenten. "The Cambrian Explosion" stellt den Tech-Death mit verführerischen Anflügen von Jazz und Flamenco auf den Kopf.
ALKALOID sind die verrückten Wissenschaftler des Metal. Mit "Numen" haben sie eine weitere explosive Mischung aus progressivem Death Metal geschaffen!

FFO: OBSCURA, BEYOND CREATION, FRACTAL UNIVERSE

VE ABOULKHEIR - 22/12/2017 GUILIN SYNTHETIC DAYDREAM (2021)

22/12/2017 Guilin Synthetic Daydream is a perceptual trap. Inspired by an experience of intense perceptive disorientation while crossing a market in China, Eve Aboulkheir reinstantiates, in the field of sounds, the swirling and anamorphic universe of thwarted perceptions, surrounding multitudes and shifted sensations. She thus constructs a dreamlike and artificial universe, suspended and hyperactive, which is both an electronic vortex sucking us in and a mechanical ballet developing its arabesques around us, caught and fascinated by these volutes of sound that fracture like a kaleidoscope in which our eyes-ears are immersed. 22/12/2017 Guilin Synthetic Daydream approaches the musical form in the most direct way possible, i.e. through its effects and its empire on our sensorium.

(fr) 22/12/2017 Guilin Synthetic Daydream est un piège à perception. S’inspirant justement d’une expérience de désorientation perceptive intense lors de la traversée d’un marché, en Chine, Eve Aboulkheir réinstancie, dans le champ sonore, l’univers tourbillonnant et anamorphique des perceptions déjouées, des multitudes environnantes, des sensations décalibrées. Elle construit ainsi un univers onirique et artificiel, suspendu et hyperactif, à la fois vortex électronique nous aspirant et ballet mécanique développant ses arabesques autour de nous, piégés et fascinés par ces volutes de sons qui se fractalisent comme un kaléidoscope dans lequel sont plongés nos yeux-oreilles. 22/12/2017 Guilin Synthetic Daydream aborde la forme musicale de la manière la plus directe qui soit, c’est-à-dire à travers ses effets et son empire sur notre sensorium.

LASSE MARHAUG - HOW TO AVOID ANTS (2020)

Using concrète techniques to collect, transform and assemble sounds of various origins (sounds of tree branches, leaves, but also guitars or synthesizers), Lasse Marhaug elaborates a dense and subterranean work, which unfolds through the multiple dimensions induced by the great diversity of its sound material. There is a labyrinthine feeling in this work, a feeling that is better understood when the inspiration for the title of the piece How to avoid ants is revealed, a very practical and then poetic undertaking, that of avoiding the anthills lining the path to the forest camp in the kindergarten to which his little girl, who was then frightened of insects, was going. It is such an activity of circumvention, diversion and byways that Lasse Marhaug uses to create an exploratory and evasive music.

(fr) Utilisant les techniques concrètes pour collecter, transformer et assembler des sons d’origines variés (sons de branches, de feuillages, mais aussi de guitares ou de synthétiseurs), Lasse Marhaug élabore une œuvre dense et souterraine, qui se déploie au travers des multiples dimensions induites par la grande diversité du matériau sonore. Il y a un sentiment labyrinthique dans cette œuvre, sentiment qu’on comprend mieux lorsque se dévoile l’inspiration du titre de la pièce How to avoid ants, entreprise très pratique et devenue poétique, celle d’éviter les fourmilières jalonnant le chemin vers le camp forestier du jardin d’enfant dans lequel se rendait sa petite fille, alors effrayée par les insectes. C’est une telle activité de contournement, de déroute et de chemins de traverse qu’emprunte Lasse Marhaug pour créer une musique exploratoire et évasive.

Ingredient is the elegant collaboration of Toronto poets, composers, producers and dear friends Ian Daniel Kehoe and Luka Kuplowsky. Their self-titled release is an enigmatic electronic avant-pop record attuned to the micro and macro perspectives of the natural world. Ingredient is an album whose lyrics are more poem than lyric, and whose songs exist in a merger of house music, philosophically-minded lyricism and contemporary R&B. One might recall electronic and art-pop luminaries such as Yukihiro Takahashi, The Blue Nile, and Arthur Russell, or connect it to contemporaries like Nite Jewel, Westerman and Blood Orange. A distinct world of dance, of questions, of secrecy and ultimate softness.

Eight years of friendship forges strange telepathy.

In the summer of 2020, Ian Daniel Kehoe was entrenched in a new feeling of heaviness; psychosomatic symptoms had started to proliferate; stress made new pores across the body, bending sensitivity into pain. His days were met with confusion, detachment, sleeplessness and pain without causation. Disfigured, he felt that what had been central and centering was blown out to the periphery of things. In a moment of self-preservation he reached out to his dear friend Luka Kuplowsky to make an album together. For Kehoe, it was an instinctual grasp for the anchoring truthfulness of deep friendship and the potential for a dedicated creative collaboration. Kuplowsky’s presence was light, supportful and curious, eager to explore musically the sounds they were mutually drawn to: house music, ambient pop, dub. The duality between Kuplowsky and Kehoe – between the Aflight and the Unmoored – is a portrait of a friendship whose exchanges came easy and produced an outpouring of song. Creation and therapy crisscross. In email correspondence that catalogs their process of collaboration, affection abounds: “feels bare without the Luka Licks”, or “Love you so much”, or “Kinda just overwhelmed with deadliness coming in at all angles.” When their voices first come in together on “Wolf,” that harmony arrives in a dramatic avant-pop sound that is bold and wondrous.

Kuplowsky and Kehoe both arrive at Ingredient as established artists whose works are committed to language’s propensity to provoke and mystify. Kuplowsky’s 2020 album Stardust is an idiosyncratic and otherworldly blend of pop and jazz romanticism grounded by Cohen-esque vocals and a stirring philosophical curiosity. Kehoe’s entrance into the new decade has hatched four records of pop experimentation, most recently 2022’s Yes Very So, a euphoric and bold album of poetic synth-pop and meditative ambient instrumentals. Kuplowsky and Kehoe’s union as Ingredient is a beautiful and unusual chemistry that integrates their distinct approaches while bringing forth a newness: a sound that alternates between cinematic technicolor and dubbed out fogginess; a lyricism that exchanges their lucid and clear poetics for a playful and obtuse verse. The album intuitively taps into the opposing emotional states of Kuplowsky and Kehoe during the conception of the record, contrasting the buoyancy of trumpeting keyboards (“Resurface”), angelic synthesized voices (“Come”), and rolling bass (“Photo”) with the record’s underlying darkness of whirring buzzsaw textures (“Transmission”), whooping sirens (“Wolf”) and murky ambience (“Illumination”). Lyrically, this duality arises in the record’s flux between openness (“Variation”, “Raindrop”) and existential dread (“Wolf”). “Illumination” most clearly crystalizes this opposition, reconciling the verses’ neurotic yearning for enlightenment with the chorus’ liberating doctrine of negation: “no more devotion… no more delusion”. Amidst the gradations of light and dark, Kuplowsky and Kehoe trade indelible, lush melodies as though their voices are made of a substance that melts easily one into the other. The harmony of poetry, sound, and texture cuts through your brain fog like a wet diamond.

Ingredient’s self-titled record was assembled by Kuplowsky and Kehoe over the course of six months in a home studio they frequented daily. Amidst synthesizers and drum machines they composed, re-composed, and workshopped a wide array of music, ultimately focusing on a set of eight songs that lived in a shared musical and philosophical world. Recording days often ended in basketball games at a local court or a rooftop commune over a pot of tulsi tea and a crossword puzzle. Kuplowsky brought in the Blue Cliff Record – the classic anthology of Chan Buddhism – whose inscrutable and sublime insights remained constant throughout the recording process as an activator of reorientation and reflection. While Kehoe was frequently rendered physically immobile by bouts of anxiety, a patience and mutual caring governed the pace of their creation; rest, stretching and meditation became equally important as the act of arrangement. Invited into their intimate circle of composition was Thom Gill, whose heavenly voice uplifts “Variation” and “Raindrop,” and Karen Ng, whose alto sax simmers and dances around the funky strut of “Raindrop.”

The lyrics on Ingredient reflect the persistence of change, the infinite variability of nature where randomness and divergence are no accidents. In Daoism, duality, in the form of Yin and Yang, is not contradictory as it is in Western idealist philosophy, but rather composes the eternal and lived paradox of our changeless-changing universe: changeless because all is change, and changing because the dynamism of the Dao makes each moment transformational. Kuplowsky and Kehoe refract this way of seeing the world, as in Variation: “Variation in the natural world / there it is.” Ingredient is an experience of the manifold ways of saying there it is of the transformational world, and there it is, unfolding. Elsewhere, change and ephemerality is addressed through the record’s preoccupation with non-human perspectives, reorienting the listener to the wolf, the mouse, the emerald frog, the centipede, the bird, the fly in the lamp. The album cover visualizes this fascination with the striking image of a reddish-orange frog atop a defamiliarized landscape of dark green leaves. Mirroring the exploratory process of the record’s collaboration, the frog also signals the amphibian’s natural inclination to leap into boundless potential. Kuplowsky and Kehoe’s lyrics manifest philosopher and ecologist Timothy Morton’s concept of “the mesh,” drawing attention to the “vast, entangled web” of interconnectedness that connects all life forms and interweaving the songwriters’ shared wonder into the Animal’s unknowability. As Luka narrates in the breakdown of the dance-floor ready “Photo,” “the closer we observe things, the further they retreat into abstraction.” In Ingredient’s ecosystem, perception is a reversible fractal where the world’s minutest details mirror the shape of the cosmos.

According to the Dao, the path to healing starts by reorienting perception away from the self and toward the self’s subsumption in Totality. For Kehoe, collaborating with Kuplowsky became the reorientation necessary for the self-preservation he was seeking, opening up a shared creative practice to navigate and soften the complexity of his psychological shattering. The album begins with Kuplowsky intoning “colossal faith” which bounces around the stereo field in a cloud of echo, and it is the enormity of “faith” that centers both Kuplowsky and Kehoe’s collaboration and their inquisitiveness in the vast mysteries of our very being. Truth in Ingredient is not an essential nugget, but a bending of the light – it is the equivocal entanglement of how we are in nature as nature, but with a plea or prayer under our breath that marks our felt distance from what we are a part of: “carry me towards the mountains of my birth / returning to the nest / the silence of the earth.”

Channeling his background in classical music, SUUNS' Ben Shemie combines string fractals, manipulated vocals, and synth-powered chaos to bridge the universes of past, present, and future. Over the course of ten tracks, Shemie chronicles a wandering soul tangled in its own dark orbit, searching for meaning in a world of stardust and astral mirages. Breathing life into Shemie's orchestral maneuvers was the Molinari String Quartet, one of Canada's most celebrated contemporary ensembles. Recording the album's ten tracks in two single-takes, the urgency and dynamism of these compositions can be heard as much felt. The listener can sense the stuttering pulse of Shemie, flanked by five amplifiers and wading in electronic bedlam, as the Molinari Quartet switchbacks measures of strings and chimes. Sometimes, the only way to make sense of the world is to travel to its absolute end. While Shemie's image of a faraway universe is equal parts inspiring and chaotic, he assures the listener _ everything and everyone is exactly as it should.